Thursday, January 16, 2014

A couple of
years ago Mars and I were invited to be guests on the “Mouth of Wonder” on KSFR
public radio in Santa Fe.Stacy, a good
friend of our daughter-in-law and son, is the show’s host.Monica and Bram are semi-regulars on the program
and we had been on once before, on our annual Christmas visit to New Mexico the
previous year.

We had a few
weeks lead-time to prepare something to talk about.But Mars knew immediately that our topic
would be soup for breakfast – part of the way we survived the Halloweensnowstorm of 2011.

This was not
the first time that the two of us battled the elements with healthily
fortified, hot liquids.In Quebec City
for a destination wedding in mid-February a few years back we walked the town
in sub-sub-zero temperatures invigorated by daily lunch-stops for
Québécois-Style Soupe Aux Pois accompanied by a pate and large mugs of hot
chocolate.How cold did it get?It reached the one point on the Fahrenheit
and Celsius scales where the temperatures in degrees are equal.Surely we could survive eating breakfast in a
household almost ninety degrees F warmer.

Soup is
normally one of our first thoughts whenever we arrive in Santa Fe – for several
reasons.First there is our
daughter-in-law’s Christmas Eve posole (dumbed down picante-wise for us
spice-wimp easterners), built around the best ingredient name ever –
nixtamalized cacahuazintle corn.Considered a stew in some quarters, where the liquid to solid ration is
lower, Monica’s Santa Fe-Style Sopa Con Alkaline-Soaked Maize is the epicurean
apogee of our winter visit – even if the temperature isn’t sub-zero.

Secondly, on
vacation, because we end up eating out so much, we can easily overindulge.Soup for lunch helps us keep from doing
that.And we have encountered lots of
really good restaurant soups over our many times in town – among them Blue CornCafé’s Tortilla, San Marcos Feed Store and Cafe's chicken vegetable (don’t become emotionally
attached to any of the free-range fowls wandering the grounds on your way in –
kidding!), and pretty much any San Francisco Bar & Grill soup of the day
(with chips and salsa).

Finally – and
remember Mars and I are no-nonsense, get-it-done New Englanders – soup is the
only luncheon item we have ordered in Santa Fe that sometimes does not fall
into the black hole of “WTF happened to our order?” – a malady that seems to
afflict many restaurants in the “city different”.

For us, ordering soup
in Santa Fe is as much about maintaining our northeastern sanity and values in the midst of
the southwestern time warp that passes for customer service – as it is about
enjoying a warm, nourishing meal.

So (with all that soup history and even more that I didn't know about)on
Halloween weekend when Connecticut was struck by a surprise snowstorm, and the
lights went out Mars had her meal plan ready.

The snowfall
was worsened by the fact that a significant number of leaves had not yet fallen
off the significant number of trees that make our state so colorful during the
month of November.And the thirty-degree
temperatures.The resulting wet
precipitation stuck to the leaves, weighing down and breaking large branches,
which in turn fell onto electrical lines causing over 800,000 power
outages.Our house was in the dark for
seven days and nights.

Fortunately
for us we belonged to a health club that had electric power where we were able
to shower.And our town provided a
generator-driven shelter for hanging out during the remainder of the day and,
if we chose to, for overnight sleeping.We decided to spend our nights at home – largely because we had running
(albeit cold) water and our natural gas stove allowed us to do stovetop cooking
– specifically to heat canned soup for breakfast.

It turns out
that breaking the morning fast with a warm potage was one of the enjoyable
parts of Mars’ upbringing, and she looked upon our short-term imprisonment in
the dark as an opportunity to introduce me to the joys of fighting the morning
cold with a steaming bowl.My culinary
formative years were more conventional – I never had lunch or dinner foods
before noon.

A few
supermarkets were open – on generator power – with limited non-perishable items
available.We headed to the soup aisle
and honed in on the hearty Progresso brand offerings – legumes in all forms
plus vegetable beef.That plus a loaf of
uncut Italian bread and we were ready.

Each morning
we quickly changed from our sleeping clothes – sweat suits, hats, mittens,
socks – into our slightly warmer day clothes and huddled around the gas burners
where, illuminated by flashlight, we heated our soup du jour and boiled water
for tea.In fifty degree darkness we ate
our warm breakfast, cleaned up, and headed out for our daily workout and
shower.After a week of icy
inconvenience we were able to return to our regular morning meal of Trader
Joe’s O’s and turkey bacon.

And Mars was
ready to share her story with the Mouth of Wonder.

Stacy was
nonplused.Not that Mars wanted to talk
about it – it should prove to be an interesting topic – but that anyone would
actually eat soup for breakfast.Breakfast for dinner, or “brinner”, was becoming a movement in foodie
circles – National Pubic Radio even covered it – but the reverse was apparently
unimaginable.Just as it first
seemedto me when Mars suggested it on
Halloween.But, when she added “Okay,
what else?” it sounded a lot better.

So, at ten
o’clock on the Monday morning before Christmas we all met at the studios of
KSFR to tape the program.Stacy was
still somewhat surprised and confused by our fast-breaking choice of food –
even in a sort of emergency situation.Monica was amused by the whole thing.And Bram, who evidently without my knowledge had dabbled in soup for
breakfast as a youth, had that “Well it’s my parents – what did you expect?”
attitude.

Mars recounted
the whole story, including her love for Campbell’s Chicken Gumbo soup with
buttered toast as a young girl.I
somehow recalled a radio advertising jingle “Campbell’s soup! Campbell’s soup!
For lunch or dinner or breakfast too.Soup everyday makes a SOUPER you!” which Stacy’s engineer found a copy
of and edited in later.

No converts
were made, but neither was anyone sentenced to the Remedial Food Choice Class
at the Betty Ford Culinary Clinic.We
even were invited back by Stacy to appear on her Year End 2013 (and final Mouth
of Wonder) radiocast.This time Mars
talked about deep fried lobster tails and Smith Island Cake, the Maryland State
Dessert.No one mentioned soup for
breakfast.

Like Marcel
Proust’s Madeleine memory this essay was inspired by a large pot of lentil soup
that Mars created several days ago and which we have been enjoying
intermittently since then.In this
variation of a potage that she makes frequently she added chicken hot dogs for
more protein.Last evening we augmented the
dish with some leftover pot roast and the remainder of its crockpot-cooked
diced tomato gravy.

I joked that
possibly we could keep this particular soup going forever – adding different
ingredients as we come upon them until ultimately we had something that was as
much an existential question about the dish’s identity (”Is it still the same
soup if the last original lentil is gone?”) as it was a tasty source of
sustenance.

But
we have to be careful what we put into the mixture.We definitely do not want to end up with
something that is too heavy for a lighthearted philosophical banter – or to be
able to have for breakfast.